Video: Getting started with HTML5 mobile development

One of the key driving factors behind the emergence and rapid adoption of HTML5 in the last coupld of years has been mobile platforms. And many of the technical features built into HTML5 are ideal for mobile applications. For example, geolocation, multithreaded, local storage, offline working, web sockets, audio, video, and so on. Now, if you're going to be creating a mobile web application using HTML5, there are several excellent tool kits available.

In this course, part of his series of titles on HTML5 and CSS3, author and expert Andy Olsen looks at advanced topics like geolocation, mobile development, web sockets, Web SQL, and web workers. You'll also learn how to communicate between pages downloaded from different servers and how to use the new Ajax features in XMLHttpRequest Level 2. After completing this workshop, developers be well equipped to start utilizing the powerful features of HTML5.

Getting started with HTML5 mobile development

One of the key driving factors behind the emergence and rapid adoption of HTML5 in the last coupld of years has been mobile platforms. And many of the technical features built into HTML5 are ideal for mobile applications. For example, geolocation, multithreaded, local storage, offline working, web sockets, audio, video, and so on. Now, if you're going to be creating a mobile web application using HTML5, there are several excellent tool kits available.

I've got some examples here. We'll have a quick look at the websites. And then we'll have a look at a sample application, built using jQuerv mobile. So we have jQuerv mobile, something called Wink toolkit, and then Sencha Touch, and Nimblekit. So let me just give you a quick run through, some of the capabilities, and technicial features of these tool kits. Other tool kits are available as well but these ones are widely used. So first of all jquery mobile. This is based on the popular jquery and jquery ui java script libraries. And they support all the major mobile device platforms including Apple IOS, Android, Blackberry, Windows phone 7.

Palm web OS, and Symbian. It's pure HTML5 with Java script and CSS. Very easy to use, very intuitive. Next we have Wink tool kit. This is also a lightweight Java script tool kit, using pure HTML5, Java script and CSS. Platforms supported by Wink include Apple iOS, Android, Blackberry, and Windows Phone 7. And then we have Sencha Touch. So the target platforms for this include Apple iOS, Android, Blackberry, and Kindle Fire.

It also gives you support to native hardware features as well based on HTML5 framework. And then finally you have NimbleKit. This targets Apple devices iPhones, iTouch, iPad based on HTML5 and Javascript. And it uses a Mac as a development platform. So these are some of the tool kits available. Let me show you a simple example that illustrates how we can build an application using jquery mobile. So what I have here is Firefox.

It shows index duration amount. You can have a look at this example yourself if you want to. All the files are in the Project Files Folder. Index duration file defines the user interface. There's some Javascript that implements the logic behind the user interface, and then there's data.js which stores data in local storage. So this is what it looks like. We have a page which lists various courses that you might want to provide as a course training provider.

For each of these courses I can click on this link to get the details. So let me click on the HTML5 link and it displays another page, giving me detailed information. These are all JavaScript objects underneath the surface, being displayed using paragraphs on a web page. So each course has an ID and a duration and a flag indicating whether this particular course leads to certification. Because lots of training courses help you to pass an exam at the end. I can go back to the original page, I can create a new course.

Let's say I wanted to have a course on C++. So that's a text box. Here, we have a range or slider if you like. So let's say the C++ course is going to be five days. I can say that the C++ course does or doesn't lead to certification, and then I can click Save to go back to the original page. So it looks very much like a mobile application. It's built using pure HTML and the jquery mobile library. So it's possible to achieve some hugely impressive effects, by using pure HTML5, and one of these mobile tool kits.

Learn by watching, listening, and doing, Exercise files are the same files the author uses in the course, so you can download them and follow along Premium memberships include access to all exercise files in the library.

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Learn by watching, listening, and doing! Exercise files are the same files the author uses in the course, so you can download them and follow along. Exercise files are available with all Premium memberships.
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